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Sunday, January 5, 2014

2014 Planner Revamp & Goals!

Welcome back!Welcome to 2014!Are you excited
to start a new year?Are you aching to
start something new?Are you looking for
a fresh beginning?

Yeah, me too.

The end of the holidays is always a little
bit of a let down for me.The Christmas
decorations are put back into storage, the excitement and work is done, there’s
nothing left but cold, dark days ahead until the promise of spring comes
around. But it seems like each year it takes longer and longer for that promise
to roll around.My accountant husband is
gearing up for longer work days and longer work weeks, and I become a tax
widow.In the beginning I enjoy the time
to myself to “get stuff done.”But by
March I’m lonely and miss him.We
usually go away for a long weekend when he’s finished tax season, and by then
the weather starts to get warmer.So
I’ll just have to look forward to that.

In the meantime, I’m focusing on new
organizing projects!I’m taking advantage
of the time indoors to get stuff done.My
first order of business was to set some goals and resolutions for 2014 and set
up my planner for the next 12 months.

We’ll start with my goals and resolutions.

I’ve been reading many posts on others’ goals
and resolutions for the upcoming year.(If you need a clarification of goals and resolutions and what the
difference is, check out Laurie’s
post on that.It’s great!)I had a few in mind for myself, but I wanted
to toss those ideas around a bit and perhaps add some new ones.Here is what I have come up with (so far):

Keep going on Health Journey – I have been working on my Health
Journey since July. I have made some
progress, but I have not made as much progress as I wanted to by this
point. So I’m trying to focus on
continuing with it—don’t focus on what hasn’t
been achieved; focus on what has been
achieved and what has yet to be
achieved. It’s the only way to go
forward.

Let go of fear and anxiety – This is a constant
struggle for me. But with a
little help and some reminders of how to combat it, hopefully I can control
it.

Take my time; Don’t rush – While we all want to squeeze as much life
into our days as humanly possible, it’s this constant push to get things done
that lead me to some of my anxiety. Too
often I push myself almost to the breaking point. I don’t allow myself to relax until my to do
list is done. My purpose for this was so
that I could focus on the relaxation only after the tasks were done, rather
than focusing on the tasks while trying to relax. But I’ve learned that the task lists is never
truly done. So for 2014, I’d like to
focus on being in the moment, enjoying more of what I do, do more of what I
enjoy, and worry less about things have not happened, which leads me to the
next three points:

Be mindful and present for every moment

Worry less

Enjoy more

Learn to say NO: to unnecessary food, to
over-planning, to feeling guilty
– Part of my Health Journey is to eat better.
But being on Weight Watchers (still) isn’t enough. I can’t count the points for my “good” foods
while ignoring the “bad” foods altogether.
So let’s remove the bad foods in general. Saying no to over-planning is a HUGE thing
for me. I often will make or accept
plans not because I necessarily want
to but because I feel I ought
to. That takes all of the fun out of
said plans. I have to think very
carefully, and look at my other commitments, before accepting any invitation,
no matter how much I want to answer right away.
The invitation isn’t going anywhere.
I can take my time in answering (see the point above). Both of these lead to feelings of guilt—I
feel guilty that I indulge in too much chocolate; I feel guilty for saying no
to friends and family; I feel guilty towards myself when I say yes when I
really want to say no. And feelings of
guilt lead to feelings of resentment. So
I need to let go of the guilt. I need to
learn to say what I mean, to tell people what I want, AND let go of the guilt I
may feel towards whatever the situation is.

Read more books – I always have one or two books going at a
time. I
am never without a book. I can
squeeze in about 30 minutes of book time a day—15 on my lunch break at work and
15 before going to bed at night. But
this is not enough for me. This only
allows me to finish a book once a month if I’m lucky. I need to make more time to read my
books. This probably means I need to cut
down on Facebook and blog time, but I’m okay with that. Life is all about choices.

No excuses! – I have a very bad habit of making up excuses for things and
allowing those excuses to get in the way of what I want in life. Most notably, I tend to make excuses for not
doing well with my Health Journey (“It’s Christmas, so of course I can have
that entire carton of eggnog!” or “It’s Christmas, I’m busy, I didn’t get to
bed until late, so of course I can sleep in and skip my exercise this
morning.” Etc.) I need to stop letting life keep me from what
I need to do in order to get what I want.
A huge part of that is:

Get to bed on time – If I don’t get the required amount of
sleep (7-8 hours for me), the next day is shot to hell. I am the type of person who absolutely needs
her sleep in order to get everything done in a day—sure, I can go to work and
get done what I need to do there. But
anything beyond that falls by the wayside if I’m not properly rested. I will admit that my biggest downfall is the
television and the iPad. “Just one more
show,” we’ll say. “I just want to read
this one last blog post.” Famous last
words that lead to an 11 o’clock bedtime.
That’s just too late for someone whose alarm clock goes off at 5 a.m.

Stick to a budget – By this I don’t mean allot myself only so
much money to spend in a month or a week.
That’s too stressful for me because life happens, stuff comes up. However, I need to reign in my unnecessary
spending. Sure, I can buy a new sweater
for myself should I need one, but I don’t need the bag that “goes along with
it.” Sadly, this means no Gillio
planners for me right now. They are beautiful;
but I just don’t need one. Ah well.

Start meditating – I’ve been saying this for a while
now. And I really want to start doing
it. But carving out the extra time is
hard. So I will start small by doing 15
minutes during the evenings when I have extra time. This may mean only meditating once or twice a
week. But it’s a start. I will increase it once I’ve made it a part
of my weekly routine.

There’s a lot here, for sure.But 2014 has just started and all of the
points above give me something to focus on, rather than being angry at the harsh
winter that we’ve already been enduring.

To help me get mentally organized for these
points, I also had to get physically organized, which meant setting up my
planner for 2014.Well, my inserts were
already set up (I do this in July or August after I’ve purchased the year’s
inserts.)So really, the point was just
to move inserts around, place the 2013 inserts into my
archives binder.

But… if you’re a planner and/or organizing
fiend, you know that not everything goes to plan (though you plan on this, and
so are prepared for it).For me, what
ended up happening was an entire planner system revamp. Now, my general daily
planner layout has stayed the same.By
entire revamp, I mean basically, everything else.I started with one little tweak that rolled
into another bigger tweak, and so on until finally, I just had to start from scratch.With everything.

I won’t go into detail here as far as what I
ended up with.I’ve decided that since
there’s too much to discuss in one post that I will break it down and start
2014 with a series of “2014 System Revamp” posts to show you what my system
includes now.The series will include
the following:

14 comments:

BRILLIANT!! Thank you :) I look forward to reading more in this series of posts. It's a total bloody relief to know that people still use their Filofax to PLAN shit--not just as a sticker book. O.o Totally appreciate the linkie ! xx

Thank you! I may have a sticker here and there in my planner for embellishment, and I enjoy looking at others' who know how to decorate their planners. But at the end of the day, too much embellishment is distracting to me -- I wouldn't be able to use my planner that way.

I completely agree, Rori. I don't know how some people actually use their Filofaxes with all the stickers, washi tape, and embellishment on the pages! Yes, it's pretty, but my planner is for planning, not craft projects.

Great post! I'm busy thinking about/working on the same thing. I revamped my system for 2014 to try to resolve some long-standing issues. It's going well so far! Looking forward to reading the other related pieces!

Thanks, Josh. Yes, I meant to link to your video because I saw a few similaries with your goals and mine. I was watching it and nodding my head at several things you said. My next video is your setup for 2014. Glad to hear it's going well so far.

We shall see, lol. There are many. Actually, I was suprised by how many when I got them all down on paper. But I look at them as goals, as things to work towards. I don't expect to accomplish them overnight. And many of them are things I've been working on already, but I wanted to make them official, to get them down on paper so that I can be accountable for them in a way. Some of them go together, so that as I work on one or two of them, the other(s) may follow (see the comment below).

Awesome Post! I think that you're goals and ideas are great, and have inspired me to create my own! I cannot wait to see your ideas for a Starbucks binder. That sounds like such a fun idea, and I love my Starbucks!